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On June 18, 2021, the Tri-Centric Foundation and New Braxton House Records will release Anthony Braxton's "Quartet (Standards) 2020", a 13-CD deluxe box set documenting Braxton’s European tour in January last year. Armed with a songbook of over one hundred tunes, Braxton crossed the Atlantic and assembled a stellar ensemble of British musicians – Alexander Hawkins on piano, Neil Charles on bass and Stephen Davis on drums. The box set comprises sixty-seven tracks culled from nine evenings of performances in London, Warsaw and Wels representing decades of American music, from the Great American songbook to Paul Simon via music by jazz luminaries including Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Andrew Hill, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and many more.

Widely revered as one of the most original composers and conceptualists of the past fifty years, Braxton has also pursued his own idiosyncratic path through the jazz repertoire throughout his career, including his 1974 recording "What's New in the Tradition" and his more recently released eleven-album Charlie Parker tribute, “Sextet (Parker) 1993”. “Mid-way through his eighth decade, Braxton is doing the opposite of slowing down or resting on his laurels, and whereas the instantiation of a ‘standards quartet’ might elsewhere be taken as a retreat into comfortable, familiar traditionalism, Braxton’s history with standards thus far should lead us to expect nothing of the kind,” writes David Grundy in the liner notes for “Quartet (Standards) 2020”.

Indeed, in the hands of Braxton and his cohorts, the familiar is an entry point into the unknown. Take “Virgo” for example, on which the musicians liberally weave in Language Music, Braxton’s conducted improvisation system, as a backdrop behind Braxton’s playing. Braxton’s role as the interpreter in the ensemble is thus unified with his immense legacy as composer and creator of music systems by the next-generation musicians versed in his system. That kind of shared understanding by the musicians is palpable throughout the recording. Nestled among the more jazzier side of things are the familiar but unexpected selections from Simon & Garfunkel repertoire which highlight another dimension of the band.

The tour took place in January 2020, just as the world was starting to shut down. There were a slew of events scheduled to celebrate Anthony’s 75th birthday – including multi-day performances at the Big Ears Festival, an international conference on his work and another European tour – which never happened. As David Grundy writes, “Never buying into the myth of the old separated from the new or the new separated from the old, such music is palimpsestic. You can see through the layers to the music’s origins at virtually every point; but equally, you can see ahead to the future, what Braxton calls “the open space”. In a time at once of unmooring and of “shelter-in-place”, we need such approaches more than ever. This music can help us, all—in our individual, joined and separated ways—to know where we are.”

1. tricentricfoundation.org